ARGVMI~1.PIF

@eager_eagle

I’m talking about the *code* wasting memory. In JavaScript each function is a heap object and its source code is another heap object. Even if a JIT compiler inlines them, the original non-inlined functions keep sitting there wasting perfectly good bytes.

@eager_eagle

That might have been a reasonable statement 3 years ago, but today there is a global crisis caused by extremely high RAM prices. Optimize your blasted code.

@HaraldKi

I am admittedly a bit…emotional about not wasting memory. Growing up on a 486 with 4MB of RAM does that to you, I guess.

The extra function will only be slower if the compiler/interpreter doesn’t inline it, which most compilers/interpreters including JavaScript will, so it’s mostly just a memory-usage issue. But I have used rather simple interpreters that *don’t* inline functions, and one of them even came with a warning that function calls are slow!

@codeinabox

@codeinabox

A function should be short enough that you can read and understand it.

Unless you’re using a language in which each function declaration has a performance or memory-usage penalty. Not an issue if your language compiles to machine code or WebAssembly, but interpreted languages like JavaScript do have such a penalty. In these cases, you may need to make your functions longer to avoid that penalty.

#programming